Campus Notebook: NanoCollege news likes to include Cuomo

Updated 5:06 pm, Wednesday, October 3, 2012

In politics, it's important to give credit even where it might not be due.

At any event politicians attend, they are usually recognized in the crowd by speakers. Every reporter who has attended a raft of news conferences has waited for the crowd to clap for each politician in the audience.

Lately, someone at the University at Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering has gone to great lengths to include Gov. Andrew Cuomo's name in virtually every news release, whether its for a job fair or a round-table discussion. The growth and expansion of the school to this point occurred largely before Cuomo took office and through generous funding grants from former Gov. George Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and former Senate Majority leader Joe Bruno, and even former Gov. Mario Cuomo.

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Still, barely an announcement passes from the school without some mention of Cuomo's "vision."

It took three words to get to Cuomo in a recent news release announcing the spin-off of a student firm to increase energy storage capacity for lithium-ion batteries:

The week before, a news release about a job fair at the NanoCollege referred to the event as a "showcase of Governor Andrew Cuomo's innovation-driven economic development model." Alain Kaloyeros, Senior Vice President and CEO, began his canned quote in that notice like this: "Consistent with Governor Andrew Cuomo's visionary leadership and steadfast support in making New York the global hub for the emerging nanotechnology industry..."

But the crown jewel of love for Cuomo came in an Aug. 10 news release. There were seven — seven — mentions of Cuomo in a one-page announcement about a Photovoltaic roundtable held at the school. Six people provided quotations. Five of them felt it important to give big-ups to the Gov. The only one who did not worked for the U.S. Department of Education. The rest all work for the state or in the state.

Now, any successful state institution that wants to grow depends on generous grants from the second floor at the Capitol, where the governor and his minions keep their offices especially during a time of tight purse strings. Cuomo might not have had much to do with the past at the NanoCollege, but somebody over there certainly thinks he has a lot to do with its future.